The efficacy of an educational program provided for children in the inpatient psychiatric unit of a metropolitan hospital.

Abstract

The three diagnostic groups showed a substantial increase in all areas of academic achievement and significant differences in means were found among groups according to reading comprehension and vocabulary, but relationships between therapeutic ratings and gain values in academic achievement did not exist.

The problem of the study was to determine whether there were significant mean differences in educational achievement in reading comprehension, vocabulary and mathematics among psychiatric inpatient children according to diagnostic categories as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition and therapeutic ratings given by the respective therapists. The 40 subjects which included 22 males and 18 females who ranged in age from 8-16 years were classified into three diagnostic groups: over-anxious disorder, conduct disorder and adjustment disorder. Mean standard scores from the Gates MacGinitie Reading Tests and the arithmetic subtest on the Wide Range Achievement Tests along with the behavior ratings by the respective therapists were used for the statistical analysis of this study. An analysis of variance was used to test for main effects, a post hoc comparison was used to determine which of the differences among group means were significant and a Pearson's product-moment correlation was used to test the relationship between behavior ratings and academic achievement.